Backed up against the wall by D.L, Hugley, the popular comedian turned talk show host on CNN’s “D.L. Hugley Breaks the News,” the newly elected Chairman of the GOP Michael Steele showed a little balls and told the truth about Rush Limbaugh. When Hugely confronted him with a fact that seems obvious to everybody but him: “Rush Limbaugh is the de-facto head of the Republican Party,” Steel went ape and forgot his place. “I am the de-facto head of the Republican Party!” he protested, “Rush is an entertainer”… and he called Rush’s rap “incendiary and ugly.”

When Rush heard that their House Negro had wandered off the plantation and forgot his place – which is likely to happen when they let the servants pretend to be in charge – he publicly chastised Steele and literally told him to stay in his place, a place which Rush clearly defined. And before one could say “When the cats form Nacky Sacky make the wicky wacky woo,” Steel had slepped forward and without a smidgen of shame assumed the lips to posterior position that has become the standard posture of Republican leaders when dealing with that verbose idiot Rush Limbaugh.

First it was Governor Mark Sandford, from the economically distressed state of South Carolina, who said “anybody who wants the President to fail is an idiot!” When Rush gave him a dirty look he apologized faster than Hoppalong Cassidy could draw his gun! Then there was Georgia Congressman Phil Gingrey, who said that people like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh could say anything because they were not responsible for addressing the needs of a constituency. The Congressman not only apologized; he called up Rush’s show, confessed the error of his ways on air, and begged forgiveness from the rotund bloviator.

Hence the correct posture for elected Republican leaders vis a vis the Grand Poobah of the Republican Party was well established before he put Michael Steele, the titular head of the Republican Party, in his place. So it came as no surprise to see that grinning coon running in triple time to bow down and kiss Limbaugh’s big fat funky butt! Hardball host Chris Matthews got it right: “The Republicans know what time it is; it’s Rush hour! Good luck taking the Party Hip Hop Mikie.

Although I consider Keith Olbermann to be the smartest of the television talkies, plus he’s got the balls to take you right-wing verbal arsonists on and smack y’all in the face with your bullshit, I was really startled and disappointed when he chastised the brilliant comedienne Wanda Sykes because she said she hopes your kidneys fail. I on the other hand felt like we were having a telepathic moment and Wanda had read my mind. In fact I always think of you whenever I hear that great American standard “I’ll be glad when you’re dead, you rascal you!”

Let me say straight away, Rushbo, that I consider you white trash with money: a fat, ugly, obnoxious, foul-mouthed, embarrassingly ignorant, racist, sexist cracker pig! The charming and brilliant Ariana Huffington pegged you just right when she recently told Keith Olbermann that nothing you say makes any sense…ever. Keith, of course, had already expressed skepticism about your sanity, Rush, a matter that is also an open question with me. I often find myself wondering if you are doing dope again. No shit; I mean, that’s how crazy you have been talking lately, daddy-o. And what’s with the bouncing man routine? I mean you don’t need to anything special to make yourself look ridiculous because you already look like an overweight Porky Pig, so whaaasup with that?

As a compulsive pedagogue I am alarmed and offended whenever I am forced to endure nonsense, but I am far more alarmed that millions of poor dumb rednecks take you seriously as a credible analyst of political affairs. Given their desperate circumstances these people are a smoldering powder keg; and obviously they are clueless, because they tune you in everyday for direction in life and follow your marching orders like cheerful robots. They are deluded to the point that they really believe those shallow diatribes you engage in everyday are useful as a compass to navigate their way through the hazardous terrain of the post-industrial wasteland that blue-collar Americans increasingly inhabit.

You are either too dumb to dig what you are doing to these people by spreading your special brand of racist nihilism, a really stupid fuggermucker, or you are truly evil. I say this because if you continue to incite these beleaguered Archie bunkers out here you are going to get somebody killed. It is well documented that the use of incendiary rhetoric, delivered with the appropriate bombast and sense of outrage, can incite the untutored mob to violence… especially when they are going through hard times and know not why. The people you talk through are for the most part fat, dumb, and lazy…just like you. Hence their heads are blank slates upon which anything can be inscribed, depending upon who has access to them offering simple solutions for bewilderingly complex problems.

Since I have seen you on-air in the studio at WABC here in New York, I know that you are constantly fed information on computer screens by a battery of researchers. Your talent therefore has nothing to do with intellect; it is all an act. The difference between what you do and what many TV anchors do is that they are reading a script displayed on a teleprompter, and you are a talented ad-libber. And that is a skill which is more suited to a comic, especially on the absurd level that you discuss events and the bizarre take you have on things. And you have repeatedly admitted as much when you identify yourself as merely “an entertainer.”

The Real Rushbo!

That’s they same excuse Republican Party bigwigs offer when they are questioned about some of the outrageous things you say on behalf of the party. It’s as if they congregate in the dark of night in Dolphin Stadium and agree on the talking points regarding how they will handle questions after you drop some verbal bomb that makes the Republicans look like a confederacy of charlatans and fools. It is amusing to watch, because the Republicans have entered into a Faustian bargain with you and it’s become their undoing.

What, for instance, is any sane person who is not a certifiable moron to make of your charge that “the only way to get ahead in the Obama Administration is to hate white people…or at least say you do!” And your comparison of Judge Sotomayor to David Duke exceeds all of your previous vulgarities and racist hysteria. And it defies any semblance of logic that you, who are the broadcast industry’s equivalent of Francis the Talking Mule, a programmed talking head who is fake from start to finish, have the unmitigated gall to question the credentials of Justice Sotomayor!

This woman has been subjected to the most rigorous intellectual tests – second in her class at Princeton, Yale Law Review Editor – and she has broader legal experience as lawyer and jurists than any of the sitting justices had at the time they ascended to the bench! Furthermore she was appointed by the best qualified President to select a judge for the high court in history. And what have you accomplished in life, Rush? Well, as near as I can tell you are the most successful clown in the history of the entertainment industry. Your story doesn’t even begin to compare to the majesty of Sonia Sotomayor’s achievements. That’s why she is going to the Supreme Court, and you will remain the clown prince of WABC – White Apartheid Broadcast Radio, rousing the ignorant white rabble with your Orwellian racist, sexist rants!

However, don’t get me wrong, although I find you personally odious in every respect – in fact I’d like nothing better than to whip your fat dope-fiend ass – and although I know that you are taking poor dumb frustrated rednecks for a fantasy ride that can never lead them to real solutions for their problems, you are disabling the Republican Party as a credible force in national politics with your rancid rhetoric; and in that I rejoice. For in this project we are allies, Rush: Never has Lenin’s dictum “politics make strange bedfellows” rung truer. Keep up the good work, chubster!

From the opening salvos of the escalating debate over President Obama’s first nomination to the Supreme Court, we can be certain that a national conversation is beginning which will speak to the heart of what the Republican Party really believes about equity and justice on matters of race, class, and gender.

It is a dangerous road for the Republicans to go down, because when the smoke clears, the working-class white dupes and deluded women who have supported this party of blatant patriarchy and plutocracy may have awakened from their self-destructive entrancement with Republican politics.

The basic themes of the Republican opposition are becoming clear. They are rooted in the arguments that have brought them success in the past: Sonia Sotomayor is an affirmative action hire; she got the job only because she is a Hispanic woman and is not intellectually up to snuff; she is a racist whose decisions will injure white men, etc. It’s “SOS,” the same old stuff, and as always it bears no resemblance to reality.

It is obvious from the uniformity of their spiels that the Republicans are all working from the same script laying out the talking points. And these are dictated by the spiritual and intellectual leader of the Republican Party: Rush Limbaugh, a semiliterate radio clown. While Rush lays it out raw – calling both the President and the Judge “racists” – we hear his rhetoric echoed by the Republican intelligentsia like former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who remains a Georgia redneck in spite of his pretensions as a cosmopolitan intellectual.

Yet anyone who understands how the Republicans replaced the Dixiecrats as the dominant political party of the South will not be surprised by any of this. As the Bancroft Prize winning southern historian Dan T. Carter rigorously documents in his seminal book “The Politics of Rage,” the Republicans won the South and dominated national politics over the last quarter century by virtue of adopting the political strategy developed by the notoriously racist Alabama governor George Wallace when he ran for President.

Hence talk about racism and judicial activism from this crowd is tantamount to the pot maligning the kettle. It is the same kind of psychological projection that characterizes the Southern white male’s obsession with black men molesting white women while they had engaged in the wholesale harassment and rape of black women for centuries.

Then as now, the greatest fear of white racists is that people of color will treat white men the way we have been treated. And if they really believe the biblical injunction “You will reap what you sow,” they must be scared to death. For as Thomas Jefferson said while watching his slave’s labor in his fields: “I shudder when I reflect upon the fact that God is just.” This fear is what really drives the attack on judge Sotomayor.

Special to BlackAmericaWeb.com

Prince of Fools!

When the President Select George W. Bush rattled the sabers of war in a special message to the nation presented from the White House giving Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to abandon their country or “face military conflict,” the solemnity of his expression, the swagger in his body language, and the bellicosity of his rhetoric gave credibility to his threat to order American forces to attack Iraq. It was as if he had become part Texas gunslinger and part Christian crusader buoyantly marching off to war.

As I watched the President threaten war I was reminded of the vital lessons in The March of Folly, a great book written by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning historian Barbara Tuchman. In this text Ms. Tuchman convincingly argues that ruling princes and powers throughout history have courted disaster by pursuing a course of action that all the available facts suggest is against their best interests. Her examples of this ultimately self-destructive behavior range from the Renaissance Popes to American policy in Vietnam.

The self-righteousness, even hubris, with which Bush announced America’s intention to attack Iraq with a motley collection of countries – which he calls “a coalition of the willing” but is really a coalition of the bribed and bullied – gives the impression of great certainty about both his cause and its outcome. But this President’ projection of certitude in a situation where the arguments for war don’t add up brings to mind the recent confessions of Robert McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense who presided over the United States’ expansion of the war in Vietnam. McNamara now admits that the policymakers in the Johnson Administration knew that their rationale for inflicting massive carnage on the Vietnamese people, while wrecking the lives of thousands of young Americans, was a lie. What connects the arguments of these men is that the reasons Bush now gives for an American invasion of Iraq makes no more sense than Johnson’s reasons for expanding the war in Vietnam.

Johnson argued that a victory by the Vietnamese revolutionaries would lead inexorably to the fall of all of Southeast Asia to communist regimes – the infamous “Domino Theory”- and encouraged the popular notion that California would be next. Bush now argues that unless Saddam Hussein is deposed the little middle-eastern nation of Iraq poses a grave threat to the national security of the United States. The fact that so fantastic a claim could gain such wide currency is a reflection of how little the average American understands about world affairs. This lack of understanding means that they have no independent position on critical issues of life and death in international affairs, a situation that brings to mind the old aphorism: “If a person doesn’t stand for something, they will fall for anything.”

The historical record will verify that Saigon did fall to the Vietnamese revolutionaries, and not only did all of the other countries in the region not follow in its wake but the Soviet Union, the communist superpower who supposedly sponsored the Vietnamese revolution, also fell. And one could convincingly argue that if the Bush administration were to stand down its military forces and allow the UN inspectors to complete their job, America will not only survive but thrive – do to the good will it would inspire in people all over the world.

On the other hand, all the signs from around the globe suggest that if the Bush administration launches a war on Iraq without UN sanction it will inspire a tidal wave of hatred against the US, making life more perilous for Americans at home and abroad. Furthermore, the elaborate security measures now being undertaken as the country goes on heightened alert is the best evidence that the Bush administration also understands that their policy of war on Iraq is endangering Americans at home.

The core of the Bush administration’s case against Iraq is that they are manufacturing weapons of mass destruction – biological, chemical and nuclear – and they are planning to give these weapons to the terrorist in Al Qaeda for an attack on the USA. So committed is the Bush administration to promoting this view of Iraq it has shown a willingness to engage in a disinformation campaign, including falsifying evidence, to manufacture popular support for an invasion of Iraq.

Sometimes this disinformation campaign is downright embarrassing, such as Colin Powell’s recent presentation before the United Nations where he attempted to pass off research conducted by a graduate student 14 years ago as hot new British intelligence on the imminent Iraqi menace; or the attempt to pass off documents the US claims proved that Iraq had purchased components for building nuclear weapons, which the UN inspectors said were forged. Added to this is the skepticism expressed by ex-CIA officers who question the reliability of the evidence offered by the US government in defense of its apparent decision to take military action.

In a March 15, Associated Press story by John Lumpkin, a group of former CIA officers expressed grave doubts about the veracity of the Bush administration’s arguments in support of attacking Iraq. A persistent theme in their analysis of the Administration’s policy is that the evidence “lacks credibility.” The comments of Ray McGovern, who spent 27 years in the CIA and briefed top officials of the Reagan administration on Mid-eastern affairs, are typical. McGovern is convinced that the Bush Administration’s evidence is “cooked to a recipe, and that recipe is high policy. That’s why a lot of my colleagues are holding their noses these days.”

These facts should create enough skepticism to cause all Americans to question the pro-war propaganda emanating from the Bush administration. Especially since their contention that there is an alliance between Saddam and Bin Laden does not accord with the facts. George Tenet, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has repeatedly embarrassed the administration by telling the press and Congressional Committees that he has found no connection between the Iraqi government and Al Queda.

Hence the CIA, America’s premier foreign intelligence agency, offers an assessment of the situation which is supported by the facts of Middle Eastern history. Since the emergence of modern Arab Islamic states in the mid-twentieth century there has been a struggle between fundamentalists who wanted to establish an Islamic theocracy and secularists who are committed to a separation of church and state similar to the governments in the West. The most persistent opponent of the fundamentalist theocrats – from whom the Islamic Jihadists terrorists are recruited – is the professional military caste in the Arab world. These modern secular strongmen, Saddam Hussein among them, have consistently opposed attempts at takeovers by the Islamic Jihadists.

This conflict became evident in the mid-1950 when Gamal Abdel Nasser, leader of the independence movement and first President of modern Egypt, was forced to crush the Muslim Brotherhood after they attempted to assassinate him. True to the fate of those foolish enough to take a shot at the king and fail to kill him, Nasser hung the leader of the Brotherhood, Sayaad Gutb – the great Islamic theologian whose thirty volume treatise, In the Shade of the Koran, provides the theological justification for the fundamentalist Jihadists. The political history of Egypt since Nasser is one of perpetual conflict between fundamentalist theocrats and the secular military caste. Anwar Sadat was assassinated by Islamic fundamentalists, and Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s present leader, has ruthlessly suppressed them. In fact, some of those who were associated with perpetrating terrorist actions in the US are followers of the militant “blind Sheik” Abdel Rachman, who was driven out of Egypt by Mubarak and is now imprisoned in the US for promoting terrorists activities.
This pattern of military men suppressing militant Islamists holds true throughout the Muslim world, and it does not matter if the military leader is right- or left-leaning in his political ideology. For instance, the Shah of Iran was a right-wing creation of the American Central Intelligence Agency, but his opposition to the Islamic fundamentalists was just as vehement as that of the left-wing FLN of Algeria, who overthrew the results of a national election that was clearly won by the Islamic party. Hence whether we are talking about General Musharraf in Pakistan, or Colonel Muammar Qadafi of Libya, these secular men of arms fervently oppose the takeover of government by Islamic fundamentalists. And so does Saddam Hussein.

A solid member of the Arab professional military caste, Saddam is committed to the secular state which Bin Laden, a militant theocrat, despises. So the claim that Saddam is arming Al Qaeda with weapons of mass destruction lacks credibility unless he is suicidal, and there is abundant evidence that Saddam is first and foremost a survivor. After all, he has been in power for 33 years. Thus whatever else can be safely concluded about Saddam, he is not suicidal.

And what of the Bush Administration’s claim that their interest in “regime change” in Iraq is only to establish democracy in that country? This argument is at best a pipe dream and at worse a charade. All of the Islamic countries are dictatorships – especially such close US allies as Saudi Arabia, which does not allow demonstrations against government policies nor permit women to drive automobiles, and Jordan, where one can be jailed for publicly criticizing the king. The only democratically elected leader in the Arab world is Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the voice of the beleaguered Palestinian people, yet the Bush administration has told the Palestinians that they find him unacceptable. This is a record that on the face of it makes a sham of the Bush administration’s claim that they are committed to democratic government in the Middle East.
If it is not the imminent destruction of the US with “weapons of mass destruction” by Iraqi-sponsored terrorists, or the establishment of democratic government in Iraq, that fuels the Bush administration’s drive to launch a military assault against the Iraqi people – let’s face it, a military assault of the magnitude proposed by Bush will kill many innocent men, women and children – then what is the real deal with Bush and Iraq?

Fundamental to understanding the Bush policy on Iraq is recognizing the fact that the highest echelons of the executive branch of the US government are controlled by oilmen. And that President Bush and Vice-President Chaney are only on sabbatical from the oil industry, and estimates of the value of Iraqi oil, the largest reserves outside of Saudi Arabia, range as high as three trillion dollars! This is a figure of such enormity that it has meaning only to astronomers and oil magnates. And anyone who denies that a substantial portion of those oil revenues will accrue to the giant American oil companies is either an ignoramus or a charlatan.

Aside from the oil deposits there is the matter of the strategic doctrines conjured up by cold warriors with imperial ambitions, inside and outside of the government, like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz for instance. These iconoclastic policy wonks – whose influence on Bush’s vision of power politics and international relations is formidable and growing – represent two generations of right wing strategic thinking in which America’s vast military might is promiscuously employed to achieve foreign policy objectives. Their vision of an American dominated new world order, a kind of Pax Americana, makes it easy to switch from fighting communists to fighting Islamic militants.

However, there are some dangerous blind spots in the strategic vision of Wolfowitz and Perle, for they are ignoring the two most combustible hot spots in the world in order to pursue the oil and ego-gratification that would result from a vanquished Saddam Hussein. Yet even if the conquest of Iraq goes just as the Bush administration has planned, certain deadly problems remain on the immediate horizon. The reckless rhetoric of George Bush, employing self-righteous epithets like “axis of evil,” has sparked a confrontation with a nuclear-armed Korea that threatens to get out of hand. And so long as the Palestinians and Israelis remain locked in a protracted war, while Pakistan continues to produce nuclear weapons with scientists who are also Islamic fundamentalists, these weapons of mass destruction will eventually find their way into the hands of the Islamic Jihadists. Woe be unto the world when that happens.

On the other hand, Pakistan’s neighbor, the massive republic of India, has even more nukes and is training the world’s finest engineers in enormous numbers. Hence India appears to have a limitless capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction – like those in the US arsenal for instance. Not only is the Bush administration’s obsession with Iraq preventing it from addressing these far more pressing issues, but an American attack on Iraq will set a precedent in international relations that India – which is currently in the clutches of Hindu nationalists – might use to justify a preemptive nuclear attack on Pakistan, or vice versa. Hence this cavalcade of horrors may well become the inevitable and lasting legacy of George Bush’s March of Folly in ordering an attack on Iraq in defiance of the world.

****************

Playthell G. Benjamin

Harlem, New York

March, 2003

On Thursday night Larry king hosted a debate between Rev. Al Sharpton and the foul mouth right-wing zealot and best selling author of incendiary right-wing diatribes Ann Coulter. I awaited the debate with great anticipation because Ann Coulter is a vulgar racist and soulless opportunist who has a flagrant disregard for fact and scholarship; routinely confusing glibness with gravitas. Al Sharpton, on the other hand, is a quick-witted master of the sound bite that is the standard television format. In fact he is so good at it that I once saw him spank the broadly learned motormouth Harvard law Professor Alan Dershowitz like he was his daddy. It is a skill that when coupled with his gift of gab is so effective the bible of the television industry, TV Guide, once published a feature story titled “Rev. Sound Bite!”

Beyond the differences in their basic style, most of what Ann Coulter has to say is sophistry; it cannot stand up to rigorous scrutiny. That fact was clearly manifested early on in the debate with Sharpton, who often seemed shocked at some of the absurd blather she attempted to pass of as serious argument. Yet one needed only go to YouTube and watch her encounter with Al Franken – a real intellectual with a Harvard sheepskin – who had exposed her for the lightweight intellectual poseur that she is. Time and again Franken revealed her to be a shallow charlatan whose claims were wishful thinking with no relation to reality. Al Sharpton, on the other hand, has been schooled in the experience of struggle, and he has been in the movement for black liberation and progressive change that would benefit all Americans his entire adult life.

I am no Sharpton sycophant; in fact I have written quite critically of him in the past. But when I look at the totality of his career in the struggle for justice in America, and compare it with many powerful white men in public life who are held in high esteem – Dick Cheney, Rudy Guiliani, Rush Limbaugh, Ronald Reagan, et al – Rev. Al’s virtues far outweigh his vices. That’s why he continues to command the following that he does. The most poor and powerless person in New York know that they can call on Rev. Al if they are the victim of injustice. And that’s a fact, Jack!

So I knew that the reverend would be well armed with real knowledge of what the realities of race are, whether the subject was police brutality, racist propaganda in the media, or discrimination in employment, promotion and capital investment, because he has worked on these issues for a generation all over the country, often in league with that venerable human rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson. On the question of character and social ethics, whatever criticisms may be justly made of Al Sharpton, he is a saint upside that race-baiting anorexic witch Ann Coulter. Although being negative and nasty is fundamental to her debating style, the full measure of her moral depravity was revealed in her vicious attack on young Meghan McCain.

Having watched her father go down to ignominious defeat in the presidential election by picking a verbose buffoon for a running mate and playing to the cheap seats, Ms. McCain set up her own blog to try and inform her fellow Republicans that their party was out of touch with the majority of the American electorate. Then she chanced to hear Anorexic Annie’s hysterical rap and was appalled that this wiggy woman was considered a major spokesman for the Republican Party. And she dared to point out that the Republicans would never win another national election with crazies like Coulter as their spokesman.

Instead of engaging the younger woman in a serious debate about ideas… Anorexic Annie attacked her for being fat! But Meghan refused to be bullied and went on The View, where all of the women, including the blond bubblehead, denounced Coulter’s guttersnipe tactics. But to everybody’s surprise and my great delight, Meghan looked into the camera and told Anorexic Annie and her partner in crime Livid Laura Ingram: “Kiss My Fat Ass!” Then she cited the beautiful and brainy Tyra Banks as her role model. I found the episode both amusing and instructive.

This exchange amuses me, because by attacking young Meghan’s weight – which incidentally I think is fine and Tyra is superfine! – she gave entree to those who would point out that the queen has no beef – thus calling attention to her own anorexic physique. It speaks volumes that Meghan said she had never heard of Coulter before their encounter, but she is an avid fan of Tyra Banks. For it shows just how far out of touch with the real America these far right kooks are. I have written my views on this Republican cat fight in a commentary titled “I’m With You Meghan, Laura and Annie Can Kiss My Ass Too!”

***********

The pugnacious right-wing punditocracy, who trade on race-baiting to arouse the passions of the desperate and untutored white mob, must know that their act is passé, and that they are playing to smaller and smaller audiences on the lunatic fringe. And since they are intellectually bankrupt when it comes to offering constructive solutions to the gargantuan problems confronting the nation, they are reduced to standing on the margins throwing stink bombs. This is the crowd that Crazy Annie hangs out with. Hence she was true to form in the debate last Thursday night.

Given their style and temperament, had they been prize fighters in the ring it would have been a classic boxer puncher match-up, Ali/ Foreman for instance. A gun-totin’, dirty-mouth, type, a female verbal bully, Coulter has a style that is snide, sarcastic, and offensive. She is a verbal arsonist from the Bob Grant/Rush Limbaugh school who seems to fancy herself a literary though childless version of Ma Barker. She was tailor-made for Rev. Sharpton, who remained cool and deflected her verbal assaults, each of which had murderous intent.

Pistol-Packin’ Annie

Alas, Coulter’s arguments were nothing more than banal Republican dogma that she regurgitates on cue. The fact that they are dumb and ridiculous is of little concern to her because she is speaking to the dittoheads out in Television Land. And thus she is preaching to the converted, with the objectives of confirming them in their folly and boosting the readership for her books. Hence she doesn’t give a fig about the damage she is doing to Republican prospects for regaining national power. As with Rush Limbaugh, the fate of the Republican Party is a secondary consideration: media stardom and the financial perks that go with it are their real goal. All this makes my spirit dance, because the GOP has struck a Faustian bargain with these opportunistic bloviators and they are leading the party to hell in a hand-basket. Goody Goody!

Characteristic of Coulter’s argument is her ridiculous declaration that “the president engaged in racial profiling by assuming the Irish cop wanted to drink beer rather than Chablis.” Or her astonishing statement: “I don’t believe there is an epidemic of racial profiling…. I believe there is an epidemic of false claims about racial profiling.” Then she compared claims of racial profiling to “a man bites dog” story. The fact that evidence of persistent and institutionalized racism against black people is everywhere is apparently unknown to her. Crazy Annie’s arguments never arose above this embarrassing level, in fact they got worse!

As the debate progressed Coulter showed her characteristic contempt for the facts. Like her spiritual father, the Rotund Rushbo, this girl will say anything because when your audience is “dittoheads” – which is a synonym for “racist morons” – they are interested in catharsis, not enlightenment. Hence she is not subject to either peer review or fact checkers. And since she is a race hustler with no intellectual integrity, Crazy Annie evidently does not take the time to check the facts herself. The result is that she ends up saying absurd things like that the New Jersey State Police documented “eight billion” cars traversing their highways!

Al Sharpton, a model of cool, calm deliberation, informed her that there are not 8 billion people in the whole wide world; and on more than one occasion he had to remind Crazy Annie that he was trying to hold a rational discourse. But his pleas played past Annie like water rolling off a duck’s back. The low point in the debate came after Larry King interviewed a racist Boston Irish cop who had sent out an obscene mass email calling Prof. Gates a “Jungle Monkey” and stating how he would have gassed and beat Gates had he been the arresting officer! In Crazy Annie’s twisted mind the actions of this racist barbarian to whom the state had given a badge and gun was no more offensive that Professor Gate’s irate attitude over the invasion of his home. She also ranted on about how Officer Crowley would now be destroyed had he been cited for racist behavior prior to the incident.

Yet in this, as in so much else, Anorexic Anne doesn’t have a clue what she’s talking about. I have in my possession a letter from a Cambridge resident who filed a complaint against Crowley for abusing his authority last year. The letter of complaint said Crowley acted like he was both “judge and jury,” and warned the police commissioner that they should discipline Crowley “because one day he’s going to do this to the wrong person.” I will discuss the letter in a piece I am writing now on the Suds Summit at the White House. And I am researching a larger piece on the black community’s relations with the police in Cambridge and Boston, for which I intend to travel there and investigate the situation first hand next week.

Listening to Coulter’s BS on the racial profiling question, two things became crystal clear to me. Racist whites support white policemen, whatever they do to black men. And the Republican Party is infested with racist psychopaths. Through it all Reverend Al maintained his cool and systematically picked her silly diatribes apart, responding to her hysterical rhetoric with a calm presentation of the facts. It was a lot like the “ropadope,” that Muhammad Ali employed against the brutish George Foreman. She kept lobbing verbal bombs, but Al slipped them so skillfully that if they were in the ring she couldn’t hit him with a handful of rice at point blank range! But the difference between Ali and Al is that Rev. never went for the knockout. He was perfectly content to spar with her and win a unanimous decision on points. I admire his generosity and discipline.

I, however, am of a different temperament when it comes to debating racist right wing charlatans. My objective is to unmask and humiliate them: to bust their hearts! I would have savaged Crazy Annie without mercy. Her arguments were not worthy of the attention of serious people and I would have told her so! But Big Al was gracious with the spanking he gave this ignorant shameless hussy… and in that he is a far better man than I.

A Sadly Deluded Woman:
The Anorexic booga-bear who thinks she’s a “hot babe!”